The technical proposal of the Ningbo-Zhoushan railway, China’s first high-speed rail line with an undersea rail tunnel has been completed after two years of project preparation.
According to the documentation, the undersea rail tunnel will have a length of 16.2 km. It is the project’s core technical proposal which has passed an assessment by a panel of experts headed by Qian Qihu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, specialised in tunneling works.
The new 77-km Ningbo-Zhoushan high-speed railway line will connect the Zhoushan Islands in Zhejiang province with China’s mainline running through the tunnel and several bridges to the city of Ningbo, crossing Jintang Island.
The undersea will allow trains to run through separate tunnels. It will be constructed using a 11km-long shield, at a maximum depth of 78 metres with a diameter of 14 meters. The undersea tunnel’s shield will be 10.87 km long upon completion, making China’s longest undersea rail tunnel.
In May, offshore drilling has been completed in the eastern part of Zhejiang paving the construction of the high-speed railway tunnel. Drilling engineering started in 2019, but due to coronavirus, the construction works were suspended.
According to the maritime affairs bureau of Ningbo, online approval and inspection were adopted this Spring to ensure the construction progress.
The trains will run at speeds of 250 km/h covering the distance between Ningbo and Zhoushan in only 30 minutes, and the travel from Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province to Zhoushan will take 1 hour and 20 minutes.
The new railway line was designed by China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group, a subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation.
The construction of the new line is expected to start by the end of this year and are expected to be completed within 6-7 years.
The Ningbo-Zhoushan railway is part of the railway development programme according which this year 4,000 km of new railway lines will be completed in China. 3,500 km will be constructed as high-speed railway lines.
China has a high-speed railway network of 12,500 km and by 2025, it will reach to a length of 38,000 km.
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